What’s In The Bag? (104)

It’s quite odd now to listen to this album again knowing that there is every possibility that Bowie didn’t know at the point of its release in 2013 that he was terminally ill, or perhaps at this point he wasn’t. Although only 3 years apart (and it had been 10 years since his previous release, “Reality”) the differences between this and ‘Blackstar’ are obvious. There is a darkness that permeates everything on “Blackstar”, and this is not hindsight as I’d been listening to the album for the few days before Bowie’s death was announced and there was a feeling that the songs drained much of the light from around the listener and took them to a place where the shadows were weighed down and the light was struggling to get through. It’s difficult to describe, and yes, there has to be an element of…